February 03, 2014

I had mentioned this when it was in preprint form and now it has appeared in PNAS. The great advantage of preprints (and why I'm all for them) is that they allow us to look at research much earlier (about half a year in this case) and thus help accelerate the pace of information dissemination. One disadvantage is that it is sometimes hard to keep track of how papers change between the preprint stage (and there may be multiple versions) and the final published stage; perhaps we need a diff for scientific papers.

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1313787111

Ancient west Eurasian ancestry in southern and eastern Africa

Joseph K. Pickrell et al.

The history of southern Africa involved interactions between indigenous hunter–gatherers and a range of populations that moved into the region. Here we use genome-wide genetic data to show that there are at least two admixture events in the history of Khoisan populations (southern African hunter–gatherers and pastoralists who speak non-Bantu languages with click consonants). One involved populations related to Niger–Congo-speaking African populations, and the other introduced ancestry most closely related to west Eurasian (European or Middle Eastern) populations. We date this latter admixture event to ∼900–1,800 y ago and show that it had the largest demographic impact in Khoisan populations that speak Khoe–Kwadi languages. A similar signal of west Eurasian ancestry is present throughout eastern Africa. In particular, we also find evidence for two admixture events in the history of Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian populations, the earlier of which involved populations related to west Eurasians and which we date to ∼2,700–3,300 y ago. We reconstruct the allele frequencies of the putative west Eurasian population in eastern Africa and show that this population is a good proxy for the west Eurasian ancestry in southern Africa. The most parsimonious explanation for these findings is that west Eurasian ancestry entered southern Africa indirectly through eastern Africa.

66 comments:

If they can simulate allele frequencies of the West Eurasian population in Kenya/Ethiopia/Tanzania, then they can generate "zombie" genotypes and use them in admixture to see what kind of West Eurasian or EEF etc.

A date of 2800-2900 years BP would be a pretty pretty conventional estimate for the arrival of a single proto-Ethiosemitic language in Ethiopia and Eritrea from a Levantine or Arabian source, although perhaps a little bit young. This would coincide well with the date of the proposed West Eurasian admixture event in Ethiopians, Kenyans and Tanzanians.

Updating my previous comment, Pickrell notes the proto-Ethiosemitic connection, associates it also with the archaeological D'mt culture whose boundaries coincide with the places of highest West Eurasian ancestry of about 50%, places a source in Southern Arabia, and notes that some see an association of these events with the Biblical Kingdom of Sheeba (allegedly adjacent to this Kingdom on the Arabian side of the Red Sea), which coincides chronologically with the relevant time period.

The mechanism by which other linguistic populations reach such high levels of West Eurasian ancestry isn't thoroughly explored. Others put Semitic languages in Ethiopia at least as far back as 4000 years BP which would be earlier than suggested by the admixture date estimates. However, given the way that admixture dating with autosomal genetic data works, prior waves of West Eurasian admixture can be subsumed in later waves statistically when looking at the genetic data. Also, it wouldn't be at all unprecedented for substantial admixture to be delayed 100 to 1000 years after an outsider population arrives in a region. So, this could still be a fit.

Per Spencer Wells it could be due to Southwest Eurasian slaves. The group hypothesized to back migrate into southern Africa from the Horn per Tishkoff and Hirbo ... And even Erhet via linguistics.... Would be Southern Cushitic speaking people or Nilo-Saharan speakers who had previously interacted with these southern Cushitic speaking groups. Both groups of sub Saharan Africans for the most part lack Eurasian paternal lineages typical of what we find in reference to some foreign elite dominance. These groups do carry Eurasian maternal lineages typical of sex biased admixture. The Horn of Africa was dominant in the ancient obsidian trade in South west Asian and also could have been part of an elite pastoral complex that passed of technology to SW Asians e. g. The Camel is now thought to have been domesticated somewhere in Somalia. The presence of E1b1b lineages in both these southern Cushitic speakers and SW Asians could be the signature of such interaction see Hirbo in reference to E - M123.

The paper shows Tuscans/Sardinians and sometimes Druze as good stand-ins for the West Eurasian in East Africans. Seems like Mediterraneans were movers and shakers 2,700–3,300 y ago.

Too early to be Solomon/David, so much have been someone earlier. Much earlier, if Israel Finkelstein is right in his skepticism of the Deuteronomistic history.

Hard to see how much of these personages were quasi-literary/poetic figures later reconstructed as historical kings. "David" sounds almost sounds like known king Suwurdata or poetic Divodasa "heaven's servant," described by people who forgot the IA meanings of things.

We have the Levite R1a Z93, somehow connected to West Asia. Has anyone tested the paternal lineages of the Ethiopian Solomonic descendants? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonic_dynasty

When they say West Eurasian, are they specifically talking about the components identified as "West Asian", "Mediterranean", and "Southwest Asian" exclusive of the "East African" component in Dienekes' 'Globe 13' analysis or is it inclusive of that component?

@AdygheChabadi, the paper shows these East Africans as mixes of for instance Sardinian and Mbuti, etc. Check it out with supplements. It has lots of tables with f_3 stats and Z scores. They are off the charts for Ethiopians, clearly showing Sardinian/Tuscan/Druze mixture. The other part can be Sudanese/Mbuti/Bantu etc.

The Ethiopians say they are part Jewish. Not just the Falashas though. There is a lake with an island where they say some Levites went with breast plates, etc. They say they have old items from old days. Some other Africans say the same thing.

Btw wrt my comment about Suwurdata, I meant names like Saul and Solomon. Surya/Sol is "sun" in IA languages. Like Shams. Divodasa is similar archaic name construction, sounds like Dawud. Like the original King Arthur mythos, sort of (according to Finkelstein).

"Both groups of sub Saharan Africans for the most part lack Eurasian paternal lineages typical of what we find in reference to some foreign elite dominance. These groups do carry Eurasian maternal lineages typical of sex biased admixture".

The abstract specifically says, 'The most parsimonious explanation for these findings is that west Eurasian ancestry entered southern Africa indirectly through eastern Africa'. The lack of 'Eurasian' haplogroups in any particular region is of no significance at all. African haplogroups were responsible, after admixture, for much of the spread, especially beyond the immediate East African region.

"The Camel is now thought to have been domesticated somewhere in Somalia".

I'm reasonably sure the camel is not native to Africa, or even to the Arabian Peninsula.

"The presence of E1b1b lineages in both these southern Cushitic speakers and SW Asians could be the signature of such interaction"

Agreed.

"The paper shows Tuscans/Sardinians and sometimes Druze as good stand-ins for the West Eurasian in East Africans. Seems like Mediterraneans were movers and shakers 2,700–3,300 y ago".

Long before then. People reached Crete and Cyprus some time in the early Neolithic, around 10,000 years ago.

"Much earlier, if Israel Finkelstein is right in his skepticism of the Deuteronomistic history".

Israel Finkelstein is not the only one skeptical of the Deuteronomistic history.

This study [West Eurasian ancestry in eastern and southern Africa], as mentioned by Dienekes, was released in preprint form about half a year ago. An additional disadvantage of releasing a peer-reviewed study in preprint form is that you run the risk of publishing a body of research that is potentially outdated. That is definitely the case with this particular study by Pickrell et al. 2014.

The recent study [Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans] by Lazaridis et al. uncovered an admixture signal (in ancient/modern West Eurasians) from a population and/or ancient admixture event titled "basel Eurasian" (a divergent Eurasian population and/or continuous gene-flow into the Near East from Africa). According to the authors of the study, some of whom contributed to the aforementioned study, this "basel Eurasian" population was introgressed into the "EEF" population that swept into Europe during the Neolithic.

Pagani et al. 2012 found similar findings (to Pickrell et al. 2014) using a punitive "ancestral East African" population; which consequently lowered the proportion of West Eurasian admixture in East Africa. Dienekes found similar results, using an "East African" cluster with a relatively short fst distance to the "West African" cluster. The results were as follows:

There are a number of obvious problems with the aforementioned study on East/South African genetics. Pickrell et al. 2014 models East African ancestry in the HoA on ancestry that peaks in people from South Sudan; Nilotic_Nilo-Saharans are used as a [imperfect] proxy, which likely results in the underestimation of East African ancestry in the HoA and elsewhere. The authors also fail to account for East African admixture in West Eurasia. Conversely, they only consider the possibility of Yoruba-like admixture in the Druze; which would slightly inflate the proportion of West Eurasian admixture in Africa.

I am willing to bet that ancient atDNA from NE Africa will likely uncover an ancient East African population with closer affinities to Eurasian populations than is apparent now.

The idea that Eurasian admixture among Eastern and Southern Africans is the result of a Eurasian back migration can not be supported by archaeological, epigraphic and linguistic evidence. The archaeology indicates that Niger-Congo speakers early settled Arabia, and Proto-Semitic probably originated in Africa.The earliest civilization in Southwest Arabia date back to the 2nd Millenium. This culture is called the Tihama culture which originated in Africa (Fattovich, 2008).

See: Rudolfo Fattovich, The development of urbanism in the Northern Horn of Africa in ancient and Medieval Times. Retrieved 2/19/2008http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/afr/projects/BOOK/fattowich.pdf

At Tihama and other sites in Arabia we find pottery related to the C-Group people of Nubia (Fattovish, 2008). The C-Group people were predominately Niger-Congo speakers. The archaeological evidence indicates that C-Group people expanded from Nubia to Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

The Tihama civilization probably originated in Nubia. It is characterized by the cheesecake or pillbox burial monuments which extend from Dhofar in Nubia, the Gara mountains to Adulis on the Gulf of Zula, to Hadramaut, Qataban, Ausan, Adenm, Asir, the Main area and Tihama.This view is supported by the archaeological evidence that support a close relationship between the Puntites/ Ethiopians and Nubians. For example, according to Fattovich, the pottery from Tihama Cultural Complex and other Ethiopian sites shows similarities to the Kerma and C-Group pottery. Given this connection between Ethiopian civilizations and civilizations in Nubia, make it clear that the Ethiopians would have been familiar with the ancient writing system used in this area. This is way the earliest Sabaen inscriptions are found in Ethiopia—not South Arabia.

The historical evidence support an old presence of Ethio-Semitic in Africa. For example, the Axumite Empire was founded by the Habashan. the habashan are mentioned in a 3rd or 4th century Himyarite inscription from South Arabia, which refers to an alliance between Gadarat King of the Habashan or Habashat.

Some of the people of Punt were probably Tigrinya speakers, who call their language habesha, i.e., Abyssinian par excellence. The term Habesh, seems to represent an old name for Abyssinia and may be connected with the Amharic word washa 'cave or cavern', and may refer to the" cave dwellers" who once served as the principal traders along the Ethiopian coast. The ability of the Ethiopians as sailors, is supported by the title bahr nagash, "ruler of the maritime province" or Eritrea.

In addition, some of the earliest Sabean/Thamudic inscriptions have been found in Ethiopia, and not South Arabia. For example, Dr. Doresse has found Sabean cursive writing on a sceptre that indicates that the Habashat/Axumite empire had writing.

These Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of the 18th Dynasty (1709-1320) in connection to the land of Punt. Given the Egyptian association of the Habashan with Punt, I call the speakers of the Ethio-Semitic languages: Puntites. We have Egyptian evidence of trade missions to Punt as early as PepiII in 2400 BC and Mentuholep IV and IV. The vizier Amenemhat, of Mentuholep IV is said to have established a port near Safaga. the most famous mission to Punt was sent by Queen Hatshepsut, and is recorded at deir el Bahri. Since the Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian documents they were in existence long before the Arabic speakers. In addition, Nubia was probably the homeland of Proto-Niger Congo, so we can assume that some of the founders of the Tihama culture may have spoken a Niger-Congo language. The archaeological evidence suggest that some of the haplogroups found among the West Eurasians may be of African origin, although they are e.g., haplogroup J, eventhough they are presented as South Arabia haplogroups. In summary the existence of the Tihama culture in Arabia, and the Habashan during Egyptian times in Ethiopias suggest that the admixture with Eurasians is the result of Africans migrating into West Eurasia, instead of an Eurasian back migration.

Too early to be Solomon/David, so much have been someone earlier. Much earlier, if Israel Finkelstein is right in his skepticism of the Deuteronomistic history.

Hard to see how much of these personages were quasi-literary/poetic figures later reconstructed as historical kings. "David" sounds almost sounds like known king Suwurdata or poetic Divodasa "heaven's servant," described by people who forgot the IA meanings of things. "

Firstly addressing David and Solomon...No Jew or Biblical scholar thinks that Solomon had children with the Queen of Sheba. That was mythology made up by Axumite kings to connect themselves to the Bible. That sort of thing is actually not uncommon in most religious spheres. The mythos of a genetic connection between the kings of Israel and Judea are much later than the Bible itself.

Also, it is now well-known that the Semites of Erythraean Africa are, in fact, Cushitic speakers who were Semiticized as could even be deduced before the advent of genetic testing. Some could have even been Omotic as attested by lexical adoptions in Agaw (Central Cushitic). Yes, Omotic existed that far north (the highlands of northern Ethiopia) at one time.

Secondly, David nor Solomon have anything to do with Indo-Aryans, nor did the Jews bother themselves about the Indo-Aryans until the Persian conquest of the region which was much later in history. David and Solomon were real people not mere figments of literary imagination. There is circumstantial extra-Biblical evidence for their existence like there is with many ancient figures. If the same skepticism of Biblical figures were applied to the rest of the figures in ancient history that would be quite problematic. We could then doubt the existence of almost any ancient historical figure. Many of the kings of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Sumer, Elam, Nesites (Hittites), Media (Medes), so on and so forth...would be similarly cast as mythological figures because there is as much evidence for them as for any king of Israel, especially, the Medians for which physical evidence is equally rare.

Finkelstein and those like him have many, many critics and SOME criticisms are quite legitimate.

AdygheChabadi wrote: "We could then doubt the existence of almost any ancient historical figure. Many of the kings...Babylonia, Assyria...would be similarly cast as mythological figures because there is as much evidence for them as for any king of Israel..."

With all due respect, there are hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, and other written records (e.g. stelae) attesting to the actual existence of many of the kings of Assyria and Babylonia. As well as other evidence, such as the royal tombs excavated during the 19th and 20th centuries.

I am not suggesting that David and Solomon were figures from fantasy, but certainly your comparison was a bit of an exaggeration. For instance, from the Wikipedia article on Solomon:"Historical evidence of King Solomon other than the biblical accounts is minimal."

"Both groups of sub Saharan Africans for the most part lack Eurasian paternal lineages typical of what we find in reference to some foreign elite dominance. These groups do carry Eurasian maternal lineages typical of sex biased admixture".

Could this be a result of India - Arabia trade for which East Africa was a jumping off point to catch the monsoon winds.

In fact, HIV entered India in the reverse direction from South Africa through Mandrax smugglers at a time when there was no diplomatic or air connection between the two countries due to apartheid related embargo

The Solomonic dynasty's "biblical roots" are not anymore real than David, Solomon etc. It's just 13th century propaganda used against the Zagwe dynasty. The bible doesn't feature any certain historical events from before the 9th century BCE.

What this finding underlines is that we need to get a wide variety of remains from the ancient Middle East sequenced so that we get a better handle of what kind of population changes were going on. Otherwise we are stuck into guessing based on current populations and historical myths.

@About TimeThank you for clarifying that. It is not inconceivable that Jews at some later point traveled to Ethiopia. Remember the Lemba tribe? I don't know if anyone has done admixture testing on them though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemba_people#DNA_testing

As for other African tribes claiming Jewish descent, I have heard of them also. Would love to see them tested to know if it is true. I have my doubts. Their choice of Judaism or some form of it is interesting though.

I have of heard about the Ark of the Covenant being in Ethiopia, the breastplates are new to me. Not sure if I believe either of those, but stranger things have happened.

@dok101I think you misinterpreted my comment. Of course, I am well-aware that many kings of the ancient word are well-documented. I was saying that there are many who existed but are not well-documented. Those are the ones I was comparing to the Israelite kings. I figured that it was implied that I was not talking about the well-known rulers from ancient history like Ramesses II or Ashurbanipal for instance.

I was referring to kings like Sargon of Akkad who is only known via the Sumerian kings list and a purported biography of his contained there in and from other Sumerian legends. Do we know he really existed? As far as the evidence is concerned we only have what the Sumerian legends say. Are they to be trusted? There are numerous others like Sargon who are not well-attested outside of legend.

@terrytThe only people that hold to Mr. Finkelstein's "Low Chronology" are those who would deny the Bible and God anyway. I very seriously doubt that anything including evidence would dissuade them from that. It is sort of an entrenched thing in atheists. If God walked into a room and proved He was God the atheists would still deny he exists. Same with Israel and the Jews, nothing will dissuade haters from hating including evidence. Here are your links.

There are several other links but they tend to run in with Norman Finkelstein. I found the Israel Finkelstein links interspersed between Norman Finkelstein links.

@Raimo KangasniemiSee my comments to terryt.

@Annie MouseYou forget the great Kush was south of Egypt and at one time ruled over Egypt. I doubt any Jews would have gone further than Kush if they went down following the Nile. The Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea are the more possible routes. There were Jews in Egypt and even Upper Egypt at Elephantine, but it is not likely any went any further south along the Nile. Ancient Israel even had limited contact with Kush. Of course, this is related by the Bible. The Ancient Jews definitely knew they existed (Kush). The famous line from Jeremiah 13, "Can the Cushite change his skin, or a leopard his spots?" Not to forget also, Ophir which is likely somewhere in Erythraean Africa.

I will regret engaging you, but...I must strongly disagree with you concerning this statement..."The C-Group people were predominately Niger-Congo speakers. The archaeological evidence indicates that C-Group people expanded from Nubia to Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley."

The C-group of early Kush was not Niger Congo and no linguistic evidence backs that claim up. There are no known Bantu or Niger-Congo words present in Meroitic, Nubian, or Egyptian. There are known Berber loans in Nubian and Egyptian and possibly even Meroitic. I know you will throw at me all the Afro-centrist Egyptian-West African lexical correspondences proposed by some I shall not name. Please don't bother. You and I had this discussion once before. I do not care to repeat it.

The C-group of early Kush were either Berbers (Afroasiatic) who were known to have existed in the east south of Egypt and around the fourth cataract of the Nile in what is now Northern Sudan or some group of Northern Eastern Sudanic (Nilo-Saharan) speakers. The Egyptians also originated in what is now Upper Egypt and Northern Sudan, but this may have been millenia earlier.

"Too early to be Solomon/David, so much have been someone earlier. Much earlier, if Israel Finkelstein is right in his skepticism of the Deuteronomistic history."

The Deuteronomistic history date for the end of the reign of Solomon is about 961 BCE, which is calculated back from the reference point of the defeat of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus the Great of Persia ca. 536 BCE. Deuteronomistic dates become progressively less accurate as you go further back in time (e.g. there is good reason to doubt that either Solomon or David actually reigned for a highly symbolic 40 years exactly). But, are more accurate for the divided kingdom period (for which there are also parallel accounts from Samuel/Kings and from Chronicles, in addition to any non-Biblical data points).

A date of 961 BCE would be consistent with the error bars. But, even if there was a Solomon or David in existence at that time, they could not have been the source of East African admixture coinciding approximately with the time at which Ethio-Semitic languages were introduced to Ethiopia, since Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language, and the Ethio-Semitic languages are linguistically South Semitic languages (i.e. a language family within the Semitic languages historically spoken in parts of Arabia including Yemen before the Northwest Semitic Arabic language replaced it). This linguistic feature makes clear that the source of the Ethio-Semitic languages was one near the Gate of Tears rather than one that entered Africa via the Sinai.

The Biblical character of the Queen of Sheeba is a much better fit to a potential source of the Ethio-Semitic languages and 3000 +/- 300 years BP admixture event in Ethiopia. There was a kingdom in Arabia, that was reputedly ruled by Queens in the right part of Arabia at a time when that part of Arabia spoke South Semitic languages, and the canonical date of the end of Solomon's reign and the Biblical reference to a Queen of Seeba visiting Solomon from that general vicinity would put a purported Queen of Sheeba as a powerful person where a powerful person should be (with trade dealings with Ethiopia since the wood and spice trade goods she is alleged to have brought Solomon as gifts are more likely to have been produced in Africa than Arabia at that time), in the right place at the right time with the right cultural affinities. This doesn't mean that the Biblical account really is accurate or that the person who brought proto-Ethio-Semitic SW Asians to Ethiopia (probably dominated by Y-DNA hg J1c which is a natural fit to that part of Arabia) was her. But, the historical record does not contradict that part of the Biblical account (which incidentally, is a part of the narrative that does not have any supernatural or divine components to it).

Professor Winters fails to distinguish between Proto-Semitic, whose geographic source is indeed unknown and could very well be in Africa, and Proto-Ethio-Semitic, whose geographic source was definitely Arabia. Ethio-Semitic is a fairly late and compact branch in the Semitic language family tree that has many predecessor branches within SW Asia, rather than Africa. It would be much more diversified now in Ethiopia if it were as old in Africa as Professor Winters suggests.

The source East African population according to the supplemental data in Pickrell (2014) had 25% West Eurasian admixture. This is lower than essentially all of the linguistically Semitic and Cushitic populations of modern Ethiopia and is instead within the range of Ethiopia's linguistically Omotic populations at the fringe of the Afro-Asiatic/non-Afro-Asiatic linguistic boundary in Africa. The Omotic populations and other populations at Ethiopia's Western and Southern fringe, would have never directly encountered Ethio-Semitic language speakers (something confirmed by a lack of Y-DNA J1c) and the time depth of the Ethio-Semitic language family is too young for diffusion from this population to Omotic speakers to bring a Ethiopian linguistic fringe population to a 25% West Eurasian admixture percentage in just a handful of generations as would be necessary if Ethio-Semites were the source of that admixture.

In a more realistic model, most of the West Eurasian admixture in linguistically Semitic Ethiopians, and all of the West Eurasian admixture in other Ethiopians, arrived in at least two waves of West Eurasian back migration- one which brought mtDNA hgs M1 and U6 in the Upper Paleolithic ca. 25,000-50,000 years ago to areas where Afro-Asiatic languages are now spoken (judging from percentages of these mtDNA hgs, something on the order of 5-15% admixture), and a second wave of admixture around the time that the Neolithic revolution reached Ethiopia via the Nile River Valley (ca. 5000-8000 years ago). Probably little or no contribution from a third Ethio-Semitic wave adding perhaps 10%-15% West Eurasian admixture to the relevant populations ca. 3000 years ago, reached the Khoi-San.

I suspect that Pickrell's source for the East African admixture date is flawed. This may be because the study lumped all admixed West Eurasian populations in more or less one pot and because the LD method used tends to mask chronologically remote prior waves of admixture while producing a date that disproportionately favors the most recent admixture wave.

Or, there could be other explanations. For example, the archaeological evidence concerning just when the Neolithic reached Ethiopia does not tell a clear story. It doesn't definitively rule out a late date in the late Copper Age or early Bronze Age, which might have taken time after its initial arrival to reach a peak point of admixture. Isolated archaeological hints of earlier Neolithic arrivals in Ethiopia may have in fact been trade goods or the product of isolated communities that didn't thrive because many Fertile Crescent crops are ill suited to Ethiopia's monsoon governed climate and seasons without evolving somewhat from their Fertile Crescent domesticate forms. Thus, peak first wave Neolithic admixture into Cushitic and Omotic populations via the Blue Nile and peak Ethio-Semitic admixture with Ethio-Semitic Ethiopians via Arabia, may have been much closer in time than one would naively expect causing the events to overlap and become hard to distinguish from each other in an LD analysis.

But, proto-Ethio-Semitic admixture from S. Arabia, followed by diffusion from linguistic Semites, to geographically remote Cushitic and Omotic populations is a poor fit to the data.

The fact that the ghost ancestral population inferred from the East African and Khoi-San West Eurasian admixed genes (which are excellent fits to each other, by the way) look more like first wave Neolithic populations in Europe, and less like Southern Arabians, is consistent with this analysis.

"Could this be a result of India - Arabia trade for which East Africa was a jumping off point to catch the monsoon winds."

I think it is likely connected to that in some way. In particular Saba doesn't look like it had a lot of useful land to expand into in Arabia so any attempts at import substitution involving trade goods from India e.g. sugar, might lead to looking over the water.

"The only people that hold to Mr. Finkelstein's 'Low Chronology' are those who would deny the Bible and God anyway".

Israel Finkelstein completely accepts David existed, but as a tribal leader who occasionally sided with cities opposed to Egypyian control (enforced by the Philistines) and occasionally joined the Philistines against the city states along the trade routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia. As he is quoted in your third link: 'a raggedy upstart akin to Pancho Villa'. In the fifth of your links (interview with Finkelstein) he says,

"There was a memory already in the ninth century B.C. that the founder of the dynasty in the capital of Judah was a person named David. I do not deny the existence in history of a David and a Solomon. I must put this on the table, once and for all, in order to make things clear. However, I definitely have a different view on the extent, on the nature of the entity which was centered around Jerusalem in the tenth century. There was something there in the tenth century, but exactly what it is is the big question".

I've taken the trouble to check out your links. The fourth deals only with the Iron Age in the region, not specifically with Solomon or David.

Your first offers no evidence at all that David used the complex:

"Khirbet Qeiyafa is the best example exposed to date of a fortified city from the time of King David"

Note, 'from the time of King David', not 'used by King David'. And I see 'other Israeli experts dispute the claim'. Further' 'Critics said the site could have belonged to other kingdoms of the area. The consensus among most scholars is that no definitive physical proof of the existence of King David has been found'.

The second link mentions only an 'Inscription from time of David & Solomon found near Temple Mount'. No 'proof' of eithers existence. Merely the assumption that they did.

Third: Interesting comments regarding the politics of the archeology, but some quotes, 'Most of all, she imagines the man she believes commissioned and occupied the building. His name was David. This, she has declared to the world, is most likely the building described in the Second Book of Samuel'. No 'evidence' at all. In fact, 'an excavation team in the northern Israel site of Tel Dan dug up a black basalt stela inscribed with the phrase "House of David." Solomon's existence, however, remains wholly unverified'. And, 'The once common practice of using the Bible as an archaeological guide has been widely contested as an unscientific case of circular reasoning'. Yes. Exactly the sort of 'evidence' your links provide. The authors assume the two kings a historical figures and claim anything founs from the period of their presumed existence as being evidence for that existence.

Tuareg and Berbers were not C-Group people The Tuareg did not come from the Fezzan, they originated in the West. According to Tuareg tradition they originated in the Tafilalt or Tafilet (Arabic: تافيلالت‎) a important oasis of the Moroccan Sahara, and migrated from there to the Fezzan.

The Berber languages as pointed out by numerous authors is full of vocabulary from other languages. Many Berbers may be descendants of the Vandels (Germanic) speaking people who ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years.

The influence of European languages on the Berber languages and the grammar of the Berber languages indicate that the Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin.

Andre Basset in La Langue Berbere, has discussed the I-E elements in the Berber languages. There is also a discussion of these elements in Schuchardt, Die romanischen Lehnworter im Berberischen (Wien,1918). Basset provides a few examples in his monograph.

The C-Group did not speak an Afro-Asiatic languge and they were not Berbers. They were Kushites and the Kusites did speak an Afro-Asiatic language. The inhabitants of the Fezzan were round headed Africans. (Jelinek, 1985,p.273) The cultural characteristics of the Fezzanese were analogous to C-Group culture items and the people of Ta-Seti . The C-Group people occupied the Sudan and Fezzan regions between 3700-1300 BC (Jelinek 1985). The inhabitants of Libya were called Tmhw (Temehus). The Temehus were organized into two groups the Thnw (Tehenu) in theNorth and the Nhsj (Nehesy) in the South. A Tehenupersonage is depicted on Amratian period pottery . The Tehenu wore pointed beard, phallic-sheath and feathers on their head. The Temehus are called the C-Group people by archaeologists.(Jelinek, 1985; Quellec, 1985). The central Fezzan was a center of C-Group settlement. Quellec (1985, p.373) discussed in detail the presence of C-Group culture traits in the Central Fezzan along with their cattle during the middle of the Third millennium BC. The Temehus or C-Group people began to settle Kush around 2200 BC. The kings of Kush had their capital at Kerma, in Dongola and a sedentary center on Sai Island. The same pottery found at Kerma is also present in Libya especially the Fezzan.

The C-Group founded the Kerma dynasty of Kush. Kerma was first inhabited in the 4th millennium BC (Bonnet 1986). By the 2nd millennium BC Kushites at kerma were already worshippers of Amon/Amun and they used a distinctive black-and-red ware (Bonnet 1986). Amon, later became a major god of the Egyptians during the 18th Dynasty._______Quellec,J-L le. (1985). "Les Gravures Rupestres Du Fezzan (Libye)". L'Anthropologie, 89 (3):365-383.

LONDON (AP) — British scientists have discovered human footprints in England that are at least 800,000 years old — the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe.

@terrytSo you have taken the immense trouble of looking into THE LINKS YOU ASKED ME FOR, how selfless of you…

You are about like the US media, terryt. You omit and misreport. It is likely good that you are not a person of faith. The sin of omission is considered as a direct lie. I would hate to call you a liar. With that being said...I never mentioned anything about Finkelstein’s beliefs. Only about those who so wrongly, strongly, and smugly adhere to them. The “Low Chronology” proposed by him and others is becoming more and more untenable as more evidence surfaces. You seem to want to make this about direct evidences for David and/ or Solomon. That is/ was never my contention. That was what you imagined it was, but as I said...US media. As I have said one other time in this thread. There is as much circumstantial evidence for King David or Solomon as there is for some other ancient kings.

I actually knew he believed David existed. That was not the point here. The point was that some criticisms of his work are valid, entirely valid. What you so glaringly omitted in your failed attempt at a rebuttal, is that the sites mentioned in those links are not small, inconsequential sites and that Finkelstein is more of a rabid attack dog trying to defend his currently flailing theory. Many of the articles also hint at a sort of desperation on the part of Finkelstein in trying to salvage and defend his pet theory.

In the phys.org link concerning Khirbet Qeiyafa, they report that, “Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University agreed that Khirbet Qeiyafa is an "elaborate" and "well-fortified" 10th century B.C. site, but said it could have been built by Philistines, Canaanites or other peoples in the area.”To that we see the comments by someone who worked with Garfinkel, “Pottery of Khirbet Qeiyafa is, based on collected ones per se, dated to early Iron Age IIA rather than late Iron I. Prof. Garfinkel and I did reply to Singer-Avitz's argument which will be sooner or later published. In short, Khirbet Qeiyafa has not yielded single sherd of collared rim jar nor the Philistine Bichrome till now. Unlike Singer-Avitz's argument, there is no type exclusively dated to Iron Age I. As asserted, pottery assemblage of Khirbet Qeiyafa straddles the 11th cent. BCE to the 10th cent. BCE. However, the fact that there is no characteristic IA I's types CRJ and Philstine Bichrome as Beth Shemesh and Tel Yarmouth which are a few kilometers in distance do have leads to date Khirbet Qeiyafa to Iron Age IIA early.

Also confer the comments by the archaeologist at the Typepad blog in the links provided, “One thing Finkelstein cannot do: disassociate the Qeiyafa pottery assemblage from the terminal Iron I/ early Iron IIA horizon. As has been pointed out by Bill Dever and Jack Holladay (disclaimer: Holladay is my mentor, along with Al Glock, in Syro-Palestinian archaeology), the Qeiyafa pottery assemblage is comparable to Gezer Stratum VIII (see Brian Janeway’s recently posted report on last year’s ASOR papers dealing with Khirbet Qeiyafa; note however that Brian misleads by assimilating Finkelstein to the miminalist camp; Finkelstein is a scathing critic of the minimalism of Davies and Thompson (see “The Rise and Fall of the Minimalist School,” Finkelstein in Finkelstein and Mazar 2007: 12-14).”

@terrytWhat also has to be admitted is that it takes quite a bit of administrative and economic power to build such elaborate sites. The type of centralized administrative and economic power that a kingdom like that of David’s could have mustered. Also Garfinkel discovered writing the Nat Geo link states, "Because Garfinkel's excavation team also uncovered a very rare find—a clay pottery sherd with writing that appears to be a proto-Canaanite script with verbs characteristic of Hebrew--the conclusion to him seemed obvious: Here was a tenth-century B.C. complex Judaean society of the sort that low chronologists like Finkelstein claimed did not exist." This is quite strong evidence that the site was not of foreign or Canaanitic derivation, but actually "Judaean". You failed to report that in your "rebuttal". Mr. Garfinkel even goes on to further elaborate the "Judaean"-ness of the site, "It's typical Judaea, from the animal bones to the city wall..."

We must also not forget the Timna Valley copper mines which are dated to the time of Solomon. Such an undertaking could have only been engaged in by a powerful state that had the resources for such a thing. The archaeologist who worked the site as reported by sci-news.com “Ben-Yosef said that the Slaves’ Hill dig also demonstrated that the society in Timna Valley was surprisingly complex. The smelting technology was relatively advanced and the layout of the camp indicates a high level of social organization, he said. Impressive cooperation would have been required for thousands of people to operate the mines in the middle of the desert. “In Timna Valley, we unearthed a society with undoubtedly significant development, organization, and power,…””…like Solomon’s kingdom.

From Phys.org about the Timna Valley mines, “The findings from the Slaves' Hill confirm those of a 2009 dig Ben-Yosef helped to conduct at "Site 30," another of the largest ancient smelting camps in Timna Valley. Then a graduate student of Prof. Thomas E. Levy at the University of California, San Diego, he helped demonstrate that the copper mines in the valley dated from the 11th to 9th centuries BCE—the era of Kings David and Solomon—and were probably Edomite in origin. The findings were reported in the journal The American Schools of Oriental Research in 2012, but the publication did little to shake the notion that the mines were Egyptian, based primarily on the discovery of an Egyptian Temple in the center of the valley in 1969.”

What is interesting here is that the Egyptians abandoned the region in the 12th century BCE.

I see no circular reasoning here terryt, only evidence, circumstantial as it is, but evidence. Again, I never made statements about direct attestations that was your misunderstanding.

Thanks for the heads-up. I still find it hard to believe that some British researchers are so keen on announcing supportive evidence for antecessor, when for more than half a century everyone else (except the Spanish) looks at this time period as the European erectus (ergaster) --> heidelbergensis transition.

@Clyde WintersActually, the Berber languages come from the East not the West. So it is no surprise that one would find proposed Berber words in Egyptian (Afroasiatic), Proto-Nubian (Nilo-Saharan), and possibly they may be found in Meroitic once the language can be fully understood. I am currently researching Meroitic and like you, I disagree with Rilly's methods. We both also agree that Meroitic is not Nilo-Saharan particularly Northern Eastern Sudanic. We apparently also agree that Meroitic was/ is most likely to be Afroasiatic of some type. You must have changed your mind about Meroitic being IE. You say the C-group was not Afroasiatic then say the were (the Kushites). There are some very massive methodological flaws in Rilly's linguistic work. Also the few IE adoptions in Berber are well known, nothing new there. The Berbers are overwhelmingly genetically related to the peoples of the ME and southern Europeans. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3842387/

About the ChemeHu/ TjemeHu (TmHw), Vaclav Blazek states, "Behrens (1984: 137-38) mentions the witness of Herkhuef a commercial emissar who visited the Upper Nubia c, 2230 BCE of the ruler of the district Iam [= Yam] ('I3m) fighting against tribes living westwards of the 4th Nile Cataract named TjemeHu (TmH). Their Libyan i.e. Berber ethnicity is almost generally accepted. The TjemeHu tribes moving northward to the 3rd & 2nd Cataracts have been identified with the archeological culture denoted 'C-group'. Another witness of the early Berber presence in the Nile Valley gives the stele of the nomarch Antef II (llth dynasty, c. 2118-2069 BCE) where the new unification of the Upper Egypt was celebrated." This article is from 2000. Maarten Kossmann (2013) among others dispute the proposed adoptions. Kossmann cannot dispute the TjemeHu were Libyan and were attested by the Egyptians as being around the Nile's 4th cataract. Also, you seem to contradict youself in your post(s).

Are not Jews coming from Ethiopia or even South of it? I have always thought that is how they came to Egypt. Then took over (Hyksos). Then with debt cycle ending, were expelled ( Moses). Rest is well known history.

I remember Rothschilds first bought land for Israel in Kenya or Tanzania

"You omit and misreport. It is likely good that you are not a person of faith. The sin of omission is considered as a direct lie".

I did not omit anything. I merely pointed out the biased nature and circular reasoning of the links you posted. Not a single one provided any 'evidence' for Solomon's existence, although the mentions of David are convincing enough.

"There is as much circumstantial evidence for King David or Solomon as there is for some other ancient kings".

The only comparison I've seen so far is with Sargon. Yet we have quite a bit of evidence for his existence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad

"What you so glaringly omitted in your failed attempt at a rebuttal, is that the sites mentioned in those links are not small, inconsequential sites"

But we know there were any number of independent 'kingdoms' right through the region at the time of Akhenaten. In fact we have the names of many, and the names of their kings. I admit this is a little before any 'Solomon' or 'David', but even in their supposed time there is ample evidence for a strong Egyptian presence.

"What also has to be admitted is that it takes quite a bit of administrative and economic power to build such elaborate sites. The type of centralized administrative and economic power that a kingdom like that of David’s could have mustered".

Circular reasoning again. Archaeology has revealed very similar sites outside the region claimed as Solomon's Kingdom. The 'administrative and economic power to build such elaborate sites' was obviously not confined to any postulated Davidic or Solomonic kingdom.

"This is quite strong evidence that the site was not of foreign or Canaanitic derivation, but actually 'Judaean'. You failed to report that in your 'rebuttal'".

Obviously the language didn't suddenly materialise from thin air. But we have no idea who 'ruled' Khirbet Qeiyafa, except that the people spoke a Judean language.

"We must also not forget the Timna Valley copper mines which are dated to the time of Solomon".

There you go again: 'the time of Solomon'. You assume Solomon existed at a certain time and then assume they must have been his mines during his existence. Circular reasoning. The mines were certainly worked by Egyptians before the 'time of Solomon'. Try this link:

"The Egyptian miners who came later used metal chisels and hoes and excavated very regular, tubular shafts, with footholds in the walls for moving down, and up, the shafts. ... Mining was abandoned when the concentration of ore nodules declined".

So Egyptian.

"What is interesting here is that the Egyptians abandoned the region in the 12th century BCE".

Did they? That's not what the above link says. And this link is interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timna_Valley

Quote:

"Archaeological excavation ... indicates that the copper mines in Timna Valley were possibly worked by the Edomites during the 10th century BCE".

Edomites? Not Solomon? And:

"The recent excavations dating copper mining to the 10th century BCE also discovered what may be the earliest camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This is seen as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time"

You will no doubt again accuse me of being selective because I left this out: 'Ben-Yosef states that "The mines are definitely from the period of King Solomon"'. He adopts the same circular reasoning you do.

"Such an undertaking could have only been engaged in by a powerful state that had the resources for such a thing".

Yes, probably Egyptian.

"I see no circular reasoning here terryt, only evidence, circumstantial as it is, but evidence".

All of you 'evidence ' involves circular reasoning completely. Not even 'circumstantial evidence'. The assumption is made that Solomon and David had a huge Kingdom and then, without any evidence, everything in the region from the appropriate date is appropriated to them. Evidence is compleltely lacking for any major kingdom centred on Judah at the appropriate time. You want to believe and so you do believe.

I do not accept Meroitic as a Afro-Asiatic language. I believe it was a Niger-congo language. Meroites used Tocharian as a lingua franca, because of the long existence of Buddhists in Egypt and Meroitic empire.

Just because Blazek calls the Temehus Berbers does not make them Berbers. There are no Berbers in Egypt and scarcely any in Tunesia. Moreover Quellec and Jelinek visited the sites and said they were C-Group based on cultural and ideological feature, while Blazek just used traditional Eurocentric terminology to identify imaginary Berbers.

As noted above the most eastern “Berber” group the Tuareg claim they originated in the West not the East.

Linguistically Berber vocabulary has borrowings from Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish, and other sub-Saharan languages. There is generally little or no intelligibility between the dialects.

Diop in The African Origin of Civilization noted that: “Careful search reveals that German feminine nouns end in t and st. Should we consider that Berbers were influenced by Germans or the referse? This hypothesis could not be rejected a priori, for German tribes in the fifth century overran North Africa vi Spain, and established an empire that they ruled for 400 years….Furthermore, the plural of 50 percent of Berber nouns is formed by adding en, as is the case with feminine nouns in German, while 40 percent form their plural in a, like neuter nouns in Latin”

Diop wrote in The African Origin of Civilization :” Since we know the Vandals conquered the country from the Romans, why should we not be more inclined to seek explanations for the Berbers in the direction, both linguistically and in physical appearance: blond hair, blue eyes, etc? But no! Disregarding all these facts, historians decree that there was no Vandal influence and that it would be impossible to attribute anything in Barbary to their occupation” (p.69). In addition, Berber women today continue to wear traditional garments identical to German traditional dress.

”Professor Winters fails to distinguish between Proto-Semitic, whose geographic source is indeed unknown and could very well be in Africa, and Proto-Ethio-Semitic, whose geographic source was definitely Arabia. Ethio-Semitic is a fairly late and compact branch in the Semitic language family tree that has many predecessor branches within SW Asia, rather than Africa. It would be much more diversified now in Ethiopia if it were as old in Africa as Professor Winters suggests.”

The Ethiopian Semitic people lived in the Eastern desert of Egyptand Arabia for many years and on the Horn of Africa. The earliest representatives of this group are depicted on the Ivory label of King Dan (Udimu) of the first Dynasty of Kemit.

In Ethiopia there were three great empires Punt-Arwe, the Da'mot or Di'amat Kingdom and Axum. Arwe is Punt of the Egyptian records and Meluhha of the Sumerian text.

The Egyptian traditions tell us that there was a struggle between Set and Horus which took place in Nubia. This story indicates that in ancient times Semitic-speaking people formerly lived in Nubia; thisexplains the Egyptian identification of Punt or Pwene as "the land of the gods". (Ullendorf 1973) The Egyptians called the people of Punt Kenbetu.

The ships of Punt were very large, as early as 2500 B.C., they had ships with 60 oars. In the records of Sumer-Akkad there are frequent passages referring to the large boats of Punt, which they called Meluhha . The ships of Meluhha made many voyages to Mesopotamia.

In the records of Sumer-Akkad there are frequent passages referring to the large boats of Punt, which they called Meluhha . The ships of Meluhha made many voyages to Mesopotamia.Meluhha, included the area from Nubia eastward to the coast of the Red Sea. This view is supported by the discovery of C-Group pottery usually associated with Nubia, found in excavated sites in Eritrea.(Zayed1981, p.142)

The Meluhhaites were known as the "black men" to the Sumerians .The Akkadians called them "the Meluhhaites, the men of the Black land".

We have evidence of Egyptian expeditions to Punt sent by Pepi II in 2400 B.C.,and Mentuholep IV to bring back rare products from ancient Punt. Under Mentuholep V, the vizier Amenemhet established a port near Safaga to insure regular trade with Punt.

The first kingdom of Ethiopia was founded by the Habesha or Habeshat who were first mentioned in the Egyptianinscriptions of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, in connection with the Land of Punt. The most famous voyage to Punt was undertaken by Queen Hatshepsut (c.1520-1484), details of her mission are depicted on the walls of her temple at Deir el Bahri.

Many ports in modern Ethiopia have been used for millennia. The inscriptions of Tuthmosis III refer to such places as Outculit, Hamasu and Tekaru; these names suggest the modern Ethiopian cities of Adulis, Hamasu and Tigre. (Doresse 1971, p.17)

“ For example, the archaeological evidence concerning just when the Neolithic reached Ethiopia does not tell a clear story. It doesn't definitively rule out a late date in the late Copper Age or early Bronze Age,”

I disagree. The archaeological oral traditions would place Proto-Semitic in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Semitic is almost identical to Akkadian, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC. This supports the high antiquity of Ethiopian Semitic language.

It is clear that the Proto-Semitic speakers lived in Africa. Wolf Leslau (1951,1957) has made it clear that Ethiopic and South Arabic form a dialectical unity. Dialectical unity means that two or morelanguages form a unified dialect.The South Arabian languages: Sabaean, Minaean and Hadramautic, are slightly different from modern South Arabic, but analogous to the Ethiopian languages.

According to Haupt, Akkadian ,Minaean and Ethiopic all belong to the same group of Semitic languages , even though they are separated in time and by great geographical distance. This is surprising considering the fact that Ethiopic and Akkadian are separated by many hundreds of years. The best example of this unity is the presence of shared archaicism .(Leslau 1951) The linguistic feature of shared archaicism is the appearance of the vowel after the first consonant of the imperfect. (Hertzron & Bender 1976, p.23)

Hebrew and Arabic lack dialectical unity to Ethiopian Semitic or shared archaicism with Akkadian. This represents the influence of the Indo-European speaking Jectanid tribes on South Arabic.

"The source East African population according to the supplemental data in Pickrell (2014) had 25% West Eurasian admixture. This is lower than essentially all of the linguistically Semitic and Cushitic populations of modern Ethiopia and is instead within the range of Ethiopia's linguistically Omotic populations at the fringe of the Afro-Asiatic/non-Afro-Asiatic linguistic boundary in Africa. "

It's not that different from the Borana Oromo. The least Eurasian Oromos in the Ethiopian dataset from Behar et al. were samples collected in areas close to the Kenyan border.

In Tishkoff's 2009 study, Iraqw (South Cushitic) and Datog (Nilotic speakers with heavy South Cushitic influence) pastoralists from Tanzania were sampled. These populations have the highest frequency and diversity of the E-M293 Y-DNA lineage seen in southern Africa, and carry a lactase persistence allele which has been found in southern Africa. Iraqw and Datog are slightly less West Eurasian than the Oromo clans from southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, actually 25% would be a decent estimate for their West Eurasian ancestry. These groups are probably a decent proxy for the eastern African ancestors of southern African pastoralists.

Languages can hang on in remote outposts of empires or expansion ranges. Look at Celtic in the islamd outskirts of W Europe (almost certainly did not originate there and maybe reached places like Ireland and Scotland pretty late).

If Ethio-Semitic has archaicisms also in Akkadian, maybe it's for the same reason. Hyksos were in touch with Kush for sure (both allied at times) and probably spoke something like Akkadian. Assyrians were in a Africa too (Egypt) at the right time window (post Hyksos but related Semitic culture).

The big mystery is what was happening in Saba, Ethiopia etc btw 1300-700 BC. The Arabs have little idea and just talk about "vanished Arabs." Ethiopians says it was Jewish. Remember, 10 tribes from the bigger, richer, more cosmopolitan, and more populous (according to Finkelstein) northern Omride kingdom rebelled 900s BC against Judah. Northern kingdom / Samaria was conquered 732 and 720 BC and lots of people were deported to outskirts of Assyria (big empire that was in Egypt ie Africa). Where btw Akkadian was the lingua franca.

I did not omit anything. I merely pointed out the biased nature and circular reasoning of the links you posted. Not a single one provided any 'evidence' for Solomon's existence, although the mentions of David are convincing enough.

Is it biased because it does not agree with the precious Israel Finkelstein???

The only comparison I've seen so far is with Sargon. Yet we have quite a bit of evidence for his existence:

I actually said that there are others like Sargon…that was omitted by you. I named Sargon of Akkad, but clearly stated that there were others. Sargon is mostly only talked about by the Sumerians. Are the Sumerians more trustworthy than the Biblical writers? I read that Wikipedia article before my previous response to you.

About the claims of circular reasoning…not circular, but extrapolative reasoning. Last I checked, scientists from all branches infer or extrapolate from what is known. Those sites are as you said…outside what would be a united Israel. No one would deny that small kingdoms existed outside of the territory considered part of the united Israel, not even the Bible. Yes, my friend those kingdoms are mentioned in the Bible itself. The point is, if it can be found within the general confines of what was the territory of the united Israel and it is known they spoke a Judean language…inference and extrapolation can be safely applied. If it were otherwise then it would not be a safe inference.

About claims of assumptions…no, I don’t assume, I am only following what your precious Finkelstein himself said. He believes Solomon existed and this is the time in which he says Solomon existed. He does not believe Solomon was the king of the type described in the Bible however. Also, I read all these links before my previous response to you, terryt. I think it is obvious since I did quote from them. Several actually said the same thing.

@terrytI think you should read this link from the same mfa.gov.il site: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/IsraelExperience/History/Pages/King-Solomon-copper-mines-could-really-be-his-22-Oct-2013.aspx

Oops, the mines do date to the time of Solomon and if one has read the Bible one already knows the King David had conquered the Edomites (and Edom) and that even under the early rule of Solomon before an uprising by one or two of the descendants of the Edomites not slain by David in his conquest of their territory. The Bible refers to the area in (1 Kings 9:26): "King Solomon also built ships in Ezion-Geber, which is near Eloth in Edom, on the shores of the Red Sea." Which would suggest Solomon still had retained control of the region during the early years of his reign. He lost the territory in his later reign as I mentioned. Also Wikipedia backs up what I said which was actually paraphrased by me from another article…Wikipedia: “A rock carving of Ramses III with Hathor is located at the top of a flight of step carved into the stone next to the shrine.[9] When the Egyptians left the area in the middle of the 12th century BCE.” So it is known that King David conquered the Edomites and control was maintained until the latter years of Solomon’s reign. This means rather obviously the Edomites would have worked for either Solomon or David or both.

As far as the camel bones are concerned this has been debated and there is too much evidence to the contrary. Camels have been domesticated in the Near East for quite some time before the Iron Age. Also Abraham is Mesopotamian and not a Canaanite. There is evidence of camel domestication that goes back to the time of Abraham in Mesopotamia, possibly even in Egypt and the Levant.

An article from Tel Aviv University and book chapter you should find extremely interesting: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&ved=0CDAQFjACOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmoodle.tau.ac.il%2Fpluginfile.php%2F86445%2Fmod_forum%2Fattachment%2F6473%2FCamel%2520domestication%2520ANE.pdf&ei=pNX4UsO7NIiSyAGOuoGIBw&usg=AFQjCNFRAWCQfEY-GYmxG7Wh-HgagqXRCA&bvm=bv.60983673,d.aWc&cad=rja

Also, you should scroll down to the middle of this page read about Mr. Finkelstein’s revision of his dates and the momentous thing that is: http://www.aiarch.org.au/newsletters.htm (Australian Institute of Archaeology). It means he was wrong…uh-oh…

I believe what I believe because that is what the evidences I see lead me to believe. I have great faith, but I also have great intelligence. Unlike many people of faith, I can answer for why I believe and what I believe.

@Clyde WintersMeroitic is/ was not Niger-Congo period. Meroitic is most likely Afroasiatic even what is known about its case structure more closely matches Afroasiatic than anything Nilo-Saharan. I know this because I am currently studying the language. It has, as expected, many possible Egyptian lexical adoptions. IE was never spoken, as far as has been discerned, in Africa before the Greeks and Romans. Buddhism is not from the West. It originated in eastern Subcontinental Asia (between the 6th to 4th centuries BCE)…a time that would have coincided with Egypt’s Late Period/ [Saite Period ~ 672 BCE to 525 BCE] (664 BCE until 332 BCE) and the early Ptolemaic Kingdom (332 BCE – 30 BCE). It is well known during this time period the Egyptian continued with their own indigenous religion as well as adopting aspects of Hellenistic religion. Buddhism likely did not spread beyond the Subcontinent for centuries. Egypt had little contact with Subcontinental Asia in ancient times outside of long-distance trade via land routes.

You are incorrect about Berbers in Egypt…The Berbers of the Siwa Oasis certainly do exist. The ancient Egyptians also recognized the Temehu as Libyan aka Berber. So it is not just Blazek but many other authors who recognize this as well as the ancient Egyptians themselves. Unless you can prove the ancient Egyptians were lying the facts stand unassailed.

According to Wikipedia, ”In the third millennium BC, proto-Berber speakers spread across the area from the central North Africa to Egypt. In the last millennium BC, another Berber expansion created the Berber peoples noted in Roman records. The final spread occurred in the first millennium BC, when the Tuareg moved into the central Sahara, by then possessing camels…

As far as genetics go…the Berbers are considered indigenous as far as autosomes go. As far as Y-DNA E-M81 that is either indigenous or from the East. Linguistically, Berber is clearly Afroasiatic and likely came from the direction of other Afroasiatic languages…the east, either northeast Africa or the Middle East.

I shall not debate the foolishness of Berbers being German. That is utter bunk. No serious scholar even gives that room in a discussion. Neither should you if you are a real scholar.

"Is it biased because it does not agree with the precious Israel Finkelstein???"

No. It's biased because it makes assumptions without offering any evidence.

"Last I checked, scientists from all branches infer or extrapolate from what is known".

But those scientists were extraploating from what they assumed.

"No one would deny that small kingdoms existed outside of the territory considered part of the united Israel, not even the Bible".

But hang on. Solomon's Kingdom is reputed to be very large. Not one of many small kingdoms that existed in the region.

"if it can be found within the general confines of what was the territory of the united Israel and it is known they spoke a Judean language…inference and extrapolation can be safely applied. If it were otherwise then it would not be a safe inference".

I agree that myths provide a guide, but we need to still find concrete evidence.

"but clearly stated that there were others. Sargon is mostly only talked about by the Sumerians. Are the Sumerians more trustworthy than the Biblical writers?"

Possibly. At least in that example we have concrete evidence and names from the period.

" I am only following what your precious Finkelstein himself said. He believes Solomon existed"

Does he? Last I read he suggested Solomon was a semi-mythical accumulation of all the desirable traits a ruler should have.

"I think you should read this link from the same mfa.gov.il site"

Quote:

"He and his team were able to show that the copper mining at the site reached its peak some three centuries later than thought - during the rule of the great biblical kings.'We didn’t find anything in particular that can connect the mines to the figure of King Solomon. The big deal is that the mines are dated to the time that he was presumed to be ruling this area,' explains Ben-Yosef".

And you reckon that's not circular reasoning? And:

"'We now have a strong indication that the mines are not Egyptian, but from the days of the Iron Age,' says Ben-Yosef".

Can You professionals pinpoint a location of an island to be the East of Ethiopia south of Eifrat and Southwest of Gujarat and Dwarka (Khrishnas residency on coast when he was not on the island Mahabharata tells a lot) .

This island should be yhe origin of R haplogroups and probably also Jewish.

As this island perished people flew in various directions obviously Ethiopia and Zagros / Caucasus mountains and India.

Is not the island in Indian Ocean giving much simpler explanation of origin and dispersion routes of certain haplogroups languaged habits cultural complexity as well as flood legends and Atlantis myths.

Has it not strikef You that Gobekli Tepe circles replicate Atkantis while burial of previous levels is a ritual that both commemorates and tries to avoid the filling of real Atlantis with mud?

I have not been able to understand why clear reference to Atlantis in Mahabharata together with its catastrophic sinking has not ben used widely to search for it in Indus sand delta region ( its buried under lot of sand since it sank)

“No. It's biased because it makes assumptions without offering any evidence.”

They do offer evidence, circumstantial as it is, but it is evidence and it is accumulative. Just because it is not what you desire to see does not mean that it is invalid or inconsequential. As I said, you are opposed to the idea of the Bible anyway. So it does not matter how much evidence is accumulated in favor of what it says, you will always say it is not enough. Like Garfinkel said about Finkelstein…when will enough be enough? It gets to point when the evidences accumulate to critical mass and can no longer be dismissed, not that they ever should have been dismissed in the first place.

“But those scientists were extraploating from what they assumed.”

All extrapolations are speculation or assumptions based on the known, so your statement is not logical. He extrapolated from the evidences he had at hand.

“But hang on. Solomon's Kingdom is reputed to be very large. Not one of many small kingdoms that existed in the region.”

No larger than modern Israel. Well maybe slightly larger including some of the lands of the east bank of the Jordan. Secondly, Edom, Moab, Ammon, were all subject to both David’s and Solomon’s kingdom. David did the conquering, Solomon maintained and eventually lost much of what David gained. As for Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress), it is literally about a one day’s walk (West by Southwest) from Jerusalem (20 miles). That is well within the united Israelite kingdom’s range.

“I agree that myths provide a guide, but we need to still find concrete evidence.”

You are full of logical fallacy. You say myth, but you have no proof of it being a myth. In effect you are in the same boat I am to some degree. I say it did exist based upon the ever-accumulating evidence. You say myth because you are an atheist without much evidence for that either. This is not about God’s existence. It is supposed to be about the genetic heritage of East African populations, but somehow, it always comes back or goes to the Jews (around 0.2% of the world population).

About Sargon the Great…There is no physical evidence of Sargon the Great, only stories. That sounds familiar, hmmm. There is very little to no evidence for others as well.

Finkelstein and Solomon…In The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein and Silberman concede that David and Solomon may have been historical characters, they posit no united monarchy, no great palace or Temple in Jerusalem during their alleged era. We know now that they were wrong about the dating of Iron Age II, so his objections of that type to the Israelite united monarchy are now in gross error.

About circular reasoning…He found an extensive metalwork operation which was most active during the time of Solomon’s reign. He then connected the two…that is extrapolative not circular. Extrapolation is linear in either direction. He based his assumption on what is known.

About the Iron Age in Egypt…The Egyptians had been working iron for, at least, 2 millennia before the people in Israel. http://www.livescience.com/38995-egyptian-beads-made-from-meteorites.html. Also, Iron metal is singularly scarce in collections of Egyptian antiquities. Bronze remained the primary material there until the conquest by Assyria in the Late or Saite Period 656 - 639 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age#Ancient_Egypt. So it seems Egypt had little use for iron. So no, pre-Assyrian Conquest Egypt did not have an iron age per se.

Just because the Egyptians recognized the Temehu as residents of Libya did not make them Berbers. Modern Berbers originated in Northwest Africa—not Libya.Secondly, you have not provided any evidence disputing Jelinek (1985) and Quellec (1985) identification of this population as members of the C-Group culture. Other researchers have noted how these people resembled such Niger Congo groups as the Fulani.The Berbers in Siwa are not native to the area. These Berbers are Amazigh and came to Siwa to settled the region due to a drought. Once they found the Siwa Oasis they returned to Algeria and Morocco to invite other Amazigh to settle the area. (See: http://www.siwaoasis.com/siwa_his.html )

Everyone knows that Buddhism did not originate in the West. Yet, even today many Americans practice Buddhism.It is clear you know very little about Egyptian and Meroitic history. Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana , makes it clear that the Gymnosophist lived in Upper Egypt and the Meroitic Empire. The Gymnosophists were Buddhists. And Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol.1 , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana(p.45),1950).Zacharias P. Thundy, in Buddha and Christ make it clear that the edits of Asoka (c.274-236 BC) indicate that this ruler sent missionaries to Egypt to preach the Buddhist Dharma(pp.242-243).W. M. Flinders Petrie, The peoples of the Persian Empire, Man( (1908) No.71:pp.129-130). found evidence of Buddhist colonist, which he claimed dated back to the Persian period of Egypt (c 525-405BC). he wrote:"on the right side, at the top is the Tibetan Mongolian, below that the Aryan woman of the Punjab, and at the base a seated figure in Indian attitude with the scarf over the left shoulder. These are the first remains of Indians known on the Mediterranean. Hitherto there have been no material evidences for that connection which is stated to have existed, both by embassies from Egypt and Syria to India, and by the great Buddist mission sent by Asoka as far west as Greece and Cyrene. We seem now to have touched the Indian colony in Memphis, and we may hope for more light on that connection which seems to have been so momentous for Western thought" (p.129). If Petrie's dating is correct this puts Buddhists in Egypt two hundred years before Asoka, sent Buddhist missionaries to Egypt.In addition , Meroites may have played an important role in Buddhism because Blemmyae, a prominent group in the Meroitic Sudan are mentioned in Pali text Tipitaka.JDM Derrett, (2002) A Blemmya in India, Numen (49:460-474)). wrote that in early Pali text " wehave a Blemmya (an African) in front rank Buddhist texts of very respectable age (p.465).The Buddhist text where Blemmya were mentioned are very old. The Vinaya pitaka, is dated to the 4th century B.C.E.As you can see the Meroites and Egyptians, in contradiction to your claims, were very familiar with Buddhism and Buddhist.

Seriously, stop it. There is no documentation by any serious Egyptologist or Meroiticist that subscribes to that absurdity. The fact that none of them even bother with it bears witness to its utter lack of merit. I will leave it at that. I do not have to provide evidence against what is already fully well-known to be a self-evident lie. I shall not dignify it any further.

It is sad that you wrote:“Seriously, stop it. There is no documentation by any serious Egyptologist or Meroiticist that subscribes to that absurdity. The fact that none of them even bother with it bears witness to its utter lack of merit. I will leave it at that. I do not have to provide evidence against what is already fully well-known to be a self-evident lie. I shall not dignify it any further.”This is a sad statement. You claim I am lying without any citations to the contrary when I have presented numerous documentation to support my claims about the Meroites and other groups. I know you are not ignorant , yet you claim that W. M. Flinders Petrie --a well known Egyptologist—is not a serious Egyptologist. He noted Buddhist in Egypt as noted above . And JDM Derrett is recognized for his work on Buddhism. You claim to be working on Meroitic yet you fail to acknowledge that almost every Classicist and Egyptologist have recognized for over 100 years, that Philostratus’:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana and Flavius Philostratus’, Vita Apollonii, , provides us valuable information on the Meroitic Empire. This documentation Is prima facie evidence that my statements have merit, while you just can’t handle the truth, and prefer to live a lie and promote dogmas lacking any archaeological, genetic and/or textual foundation.

Yet AdygheChabadi said Solomon's empire was 'No larger than modern Israel'. I was sure the Bible claimed it reached the Euphrates. We are left with the question of why did Solomon build many very similar temples, or are we looking at a widespread religion that was in no way confined to the region we know today as Israel?

But sometimes it can take a very, very, very long time. I see it was About Time who raised the subject of David and Solomon:

"Too early to be Solomon/David, so much have been someone earlier".

Further to the discussion on Solomon (although a side issue to the post's subject) I've found out that 'Solomon' is actually the same name as 'Shalmaneser'. Of course that doen't mean they are the same person, but look at this:

Thank you for your comments. However, I think we miss a major point here. No one has found Solomon's temple because the place where it stood is underneath a mosque right now. It is not possible to excavate the area because of political and religious absurdity. Also we must also note that the "Palestinians" bulldozed under the mosque in an attempt, as some would say, to destroy any Jewish history underneath it to remove the Jewish connection to the land. Which is utterly outrageous, but the world is rather repulsively complicit in this ignoble tragedy...hatred of the Jews is a rampant worldwide psychopathy.

Also, it is strange, that the Biblical authors also recalled, rather accurately, that there was once a river that ran across Arabia. Science found it. In fact, they found, at least, two major river systems. The river the Bible spoke of had dried up quite some time (between 3500 and 2000 B.C.E ~ 5500 – 4000 ybp) before this was written in the Bible (over 2000 – 1000 years before it was written down). How the Bible writers remembered this is extraordinary to say the least about it, especially, when others seemed to have forgotten it. It is also strange how Job knew the world hanged on nothing and that it was round. The point to this is that the Bible is unique in those viewpoints for that time period and, in fact, entirely accurate, but this is never mentioned. It interesting how people like to cherry-pick things in the Bible and they often do it in great error and ignorance.

The Temple at Ain Dara is merely indicative of shared archaeological styles across the Levant. This is not new or any great news. Archaeologists have known about shared archaeological styles in the Levant from almost the beginning. It is just like the cultural and linguistic parallels shared across the ancient Levant. There is a temple in Tanis, Lower Egypt that is similar. Besides that, the temple at Ain Dara pre-dates Solomon’s temple and it also shows that such temples were possible and present in many cities.

@terryt

I actually said, “Solomon's kingdom”, which is not to speak of an empire. The central kingdom is thus...http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/images/davidmap.gif | http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Davids-kingdom_with_captions_specifiying_vassal_kingdoms-derivative-work.jpg...exactly as I described to you.

To the quote you gave about Solomon and Shalmaneser...Solomon is the Hellenized form of Hebrew: שְׁלֹמֹה (Shalom > Shelomoh > Shlomo) meaning peace or God’s peace. Shalmaneser (Shalmanu/ Shulmanu-asharedu) is derived from Shalmanu (Shulman) is an East Semitic Mesopotamian god of the underworld, fertility, and war. The word Shalmanu/ Shulmanu means “greeting-gift” in later Middle Assyrian meant “audience gift”. The word asharedu, asaredu, asaridu, asherdu, asharid, asarid, ašarēd, etc… which means “foremost, preeminent, vanguard”. The Assyrian word for “peace, well-being” is šalām(u) (Shalām[u]). People have even tried to connect the Egyptian pharaoh Siamun (S3-jmn/ imn) “son (s3) of Amun (jmn/ imn)”, the sixth pharaoh of Egypt during the Twenty-first dynasty, whose name can be sel-amen, seɹ-amen, or sVʔ-amen it depends on what the Egyptological alef is...whether it represents an original *l (alveolar lateral approximant), *ɹ (alveolar approximant), or whether it is *Vʔ (vocalic). The name of the Egyptian pharaoh fails on semantic and phonological grounds.

@Clyde Winters

I looked up these "gymnosophists in Meroe and Egypt" these are actually fictitious “life stories” and novels written or related by Philostratus (Lucius Flavius Philostratus) and also by Heliodorus of Emesa. For example...http://books.google.com/books?id=mZJ87gJWec8C&pg=PA361&lpg=PA361&dq=gymnosophists+in+Meroe&source=bl&ots=VA6PuBsfBt&sig=A_m6zCq-eztVBvjr4xB-h8pJ3js&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8uX_UsG_AdC0kQf15oDYAw&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=gymnosophists%20in%20Meroe&f=false

Your comments are ludicris. Gymnosophist was the name given Buddhists. They were not fictitious, as you claim, W. M. Flinders Petrie made this clear when he found them in Egypt..

In addition to the archaeological evidence discovered by Petrie , the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, and Asoka's edit sending missionaries to Egypt, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940.

Moreover, there is textual material of other Indians in Egypt in addition Gymnosophist/Buddhist communities in Upper Egypt and Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indian traders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda,Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593).

These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system. All of this supported the traditions of the Meroites that speak of a knowledge of the Kushana/Indians among the Meroites.

Yes, Ashoka sent emissaries to Alexandria, Egypt during the Ptolemaic period. Even invited one of the Ptolemy's to be a Buddhist. Buddhist monks lived in Alexandria. There was also a great procession of women who displayed the glories of India (270 BCE) in Alexandria. I knew this already. This was not the contention. You claimed that the Egyptians and Meroites were Buddhists.

The Kushan coins in Ethiopia are from many centuries after during the Axumite period in Ethiopia (1st Century - 6th Century CE). Confirming trade between Axum, India, and Rome...These were either brought back by an Axumite trader or brought to Axum by an Indian trader.

About Quseir-Al-Qadim...1. Tamil Brahmi Script Found in Egypt

QUSEIR-AL-QADIM, EGYPT, February 20, 2008: A broken storage jar with inscriptions in an ancient form of Tamil script, dated to the first century BCE., has been excavated in Egypt.

Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India. Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about the first century.

Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi from the same era. Additionally, a pottery inscription was found in 1995 at Berenike, a Roman settlement of the Red Sea coast of Egypt. These discoveries proved material evidence to corroborate the literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about the flourishing trade between the India and Rome, via the Red Sea ports, in the early centuries CE.

This only confirms the extremely well-known trade between Rome and India.

My objections were to the Buddhist and "Tocharian" connections to Meroe. What you claim about Egypt being Buddhist and Meroe being Buddhist is outright fallacy and you know this. Expounding half-truths as whole facts is deception of the highest magnitude. There is no known textual evidence of IE languages other than Greek and Latin in Kush/ Nubia. What is clear from reading is that while Indian artifacts have been found in port cities maintained by Rome in Egypt (due to Roman trade) the same evidence is not present for the Nile Valley. Possible Dravidian adoptions in Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin have been long discussed. We "discussed" proto-level lexical parallels between Dravidian and Afroasiatic before.

You have done nothing to falsify the claim of the Classical writers that Buddhist= Gymnosophists and that Gymnosophist/Buddhists lived in Meroe and Upper Egypt. All you have provided us is your opinion. Opinions are worthless, when confronted with the abundance of archaeological,historical textual evidence of Buddhists in the Nile Valley.

There is epigraphic evidence of Buddhist in the Meroitic Empire. Aubin (2003) did a comparison of Meroitic and Kharothi and discovered that 34 out of 42 signs or 81% matched. See: Aubin,P. (2003), Evidence for an Early Nubian Dialect in Meroitic Inscriptions: Phonological and Epigraphic Considerations. Meroitic Newsletter, pp.16-39. Welsby in The Kingdom of Kush, notes that "only four of the [Meroitic] letters resemble the equivalent Egyptian demotic signs" (p.193). This is suprising because earlier Kushites wrote their inscriptions in Egyptian scripts.

The Tocharian language was spoken by a population that called themselves Kushana. The Meroitic inscriptions provide textual evidence of Tocharian in the language.

We can assume that if there is cognition between the Meroitic and the Kharothi scripts we would also find cognition between the Kushana/Tocharian language and Meroitic.

A comparison of Meroitic and Tocharian grammatical features also indicates that in many cases Meroitic words average one- three characters. In recent years researchers were able to develop a grammar of Meroitic, without being able to read Meroitic. Hintze (1979) grammar of Meroitic provided the necessary material to compare Meroitic with other languages to find its cognate language.

Hintze (1979) was sure that there were a number of Meroitic affixes including:p,ye,-te,-to, and –o. B.G. Trigger in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned several other possible Meroitic affixes including:-n,-te and –b. In addition , A. M. Abdalla in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979)mentioned three possible verbal suffixes , including:-ñ,-t,-y. The Kushana or Tocharian language includes all of these affixes.

Winters took these suggested Meroitic lexemes and compared them to Tocharian to discover if similar affixes existed in Kushana. In Tocharian we find these prefixes: p(ä), the imperfect prefix and imperative, y- the Tocharian element are joined to demonstratives , e.g., yopsa ‘in between’.

There are other affixes that relate to the Meroitic suffixes proposed by Abdalla and Hintze (1979) that are explained by Tocharian including –te, the demonstrative ‘this, etc.’; -o, the suffix used to change nouns into adjectives. For example: aiśamñe ‘knowledge’, asimo ‘knowing; klyomñ ’nobility’, klyomo ‘noble’.

Other Tocharian affixes which provide insight into Meroitic affixes include –te and -l. The Tocharian locative suffix is –te. The ending particle in Tocharian is –l. The Meroitic –t, corresponds to the –t ‘you’. In Tocharian the pronouns are placed at the end of words: nas-a-m ‘I am’, träkä-s ‘he says’, träkä-t ‘you say’.

The –t element in Tocharian can also be used to represent the third person singular e.g., kälpa-t ‘he found’.The p-, element used to form the imperative and imperfect in Tocharian . This affix is used in both Tocharian A and B. For example,Tokh.A klyos "to hear, to listen"p(a)klyos "You listen"p(a)klyossu "s/he listens"Tokh. B klyausp(a)klyaus 'you listen"A. ta, tas, "to lay, to put"ptas 'you lay'B. tes, tas 'to put, to lay'ptes 'you put'.

The Tocharian -n-, has many uses . It can be used to form the subjuntive, e.g., yam 'to do', yaman 's/he do(es). It is also used to form the plural se 'son', pl. sewan 'sons; ri 'city', pl. rin 'cities'.The plural in Tocharian is formed by the –ñ. For example,are ‘plough’, pl. areñ ‘ploughs’ ri ‘city’ , pl. riñ ‘cities.

Recognition of analogous structural elements in relation to Kushana/ Tocharian and Meroitic allowed us to divide the Meroitic phonemes into words. Griffith (1911a,1911b,1912) provided us with evidence for selected Meroitic nouns.

Penelope Aubin was basing her work off of what you proposed. I am well aware of her paper as I have quoted it in my own.

Also, NEARLY all Near Eastern scripts, ultimately, have their basis in Egyptian hieroglyphs (at least in great part) even Kharosthi which is derived from the Aramaic alphabet which is derived from Phoenician which is derived from Proto-Sinaitic which is, at least in great part, derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Roman and Greek alphabets also ultimately derive from Egyptian hieroglyhs (at least in great part). Meroitic is derived of Egyptian as well. The similarity in graphemes can be ascribed to common origin of the scripts, ultimately and in great part, from Egyptian.

In The Making of Roman India by Grant Parker from 2008, he states, "Excavations at Quseir al-Qadim beginning in the late 1970s turned up two ostraka inscribed in the southern India's Tamil-Brahmi script. These, which contain the names Kanan and Catan, have been dated to the first century ad. Amidst a find of pottery that can be dated to ad 60—70, the Berenike excavation has also produced two ostraka inscribed in Tamil Brahmi.

Archaeological finds constitute the third and most problematic category of evidence. South Asia itself has produced a variety of evidence, particularly from the southwest coast (known variously as Limyrike, the Malabar Coast and Kerala), and the southeast coast (the Coromandel coast or Tamil Nadu); likewise the Red Sea coast, and especially the Egyptian port of Berenike.

By contrast, the Nile Valley itself has almost nothing to offer; and, as we have seen above, the archaeological yield from Italy itself has been extremely scant. So Various kinds of material have been found: pots and amphorae, bronzeware, and coins. The best-known Indian site is that of Arikamedu,in part because it was excavated by the British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler in the years 1944—48; but more recent work has challenged his analysis that this may be viewed as a Roman settlement."

As for Tarim Basin IE and the Meroitic script...utter bunk.

As far as has been discovered...no Buddhists in Meroe or the rest of the Nile Valley except Alexandria in the delta region of Lower Egypt.

You call this discussion of Buddhism in the Meroitic Empire “ utter bunk”, yet you have failed to give any counter evidence. It is sad that you are dishonet.. You continue to ignore the Classical literature claiming Buddhism was practiced in the Meroitic Empire,along with the epigraphic, archaeological and the linguistic evidence supporting the textual evidence. The first Meroitic inscription was written by Queen Shanakdakhete (c.155-177) and it is found at Naga. This indicates that Naga was a center for the spread of Meroitic writing in the Empire.

The reality that Naga was the place where Meroitic originated is also the location where Buddhist elements are found in Meroitic iconography. The lotus flower and three headed diety are associated with Buddhism. At Naga Temple we find the god Apedemak with three heads like the gods associated with Buddhism in India, and the figure of a snake with a lion head and human arms coming out of a lotus.

The fact that Shanakdakhete introduced Meroitic writing at Naga, where Apedemak was represented in association with Buddhist ideology explains why Kharosthi symbols dominate Meroitic writing as noted by Aubin. In summary, the Meroitic epigraphic, archaeological and linguistic evidence support the textual evidence that Buddhism existed in the Meroitic empire.

Glass provides evidence that Kharosthi writing dates back to the first Brahmi inscriptions of India . The fact the writing was used in India by Asoka to produce the rock edicts , demonstrates that Khasrothi was in use long before the introduction of the Meroitic script to Kush.

You should not spread lies about Kharosthi You claim the kharosthi is based on egyptian writing and Aramaic. This is false kharosthi is based on Tamili writing. Moreover, you claim that Brahmi is based on proto-sinatic this is also false. The Brahmi writing is based on the Indus Valley writing and Tamili (see: http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/103/10/1220.pdf ).

Old Blog Archive

Dienekes' Anthropology blog is dedicated to human population genetics, physical anthropology, archaeology, and history.

You are free to reuse any of the materials of this blog for non-commercial purposes, as long as you attribute them to Dienekes Pontikos and provide a link to either the individual blog entry or to Dienekes Anthropology Blog.

Feel free to send e-mail to Dienekes Pontikos, or follow @dienekesp on Twitter.